Meta Question

What if there were anti-lurve?

I am NOT suggesting that Fluther.com implement this, but does anyone have any experience with (or well-considered thoughts on) sites like this that allow both a ‘thumbs up’ and a ‘thumbs down’ vote on questions and answers?

Does it affect the number of questions and answers?
Does it effect the quality of questions and answers?
Does it effect spontaneity? humor? smart-aleckness?
Does it effect the fun of the site?
Does it effect the membership of the site?

67 Answers

I wouldn’t like that at all.

I’ve been on some sites (well, forums) that implement this kind of a system and it doesn’t do so well. It turns into a “popularity contest”, because people tend to do a “thumbs down” when they disagree with the other person. (it’s natural). I think everyone should be able to freely (and constructively) express their opinion without the worry of “What others will think” and what if they would get a thumbs down for it.

Also, there is a potential for abuse, particularly during arguments when things start to heat up. Someone’s rep could really go into the toilet because so-and-so didn’t like what they said.

If there were antilurve, spring would never come. Chocolate would taste like ash. The honeysuckle would not sweeten the air. It would be impossible to tune an orchestra. The Taj Mahal would leave everyone unmoved. The world would feel like sandpaper. fluther would die.

Hey! I’m not the one advocating antilurve. Grisson asked what if. However, I do think that the consequences are rather severe, and we would do well to fend off any effort by the anti-fluther to bring in anti-lurve.

And yes, Grisson. Lurve and antilurve are very much like electrons and positrons. We don’t want to upset the viability of the universe, do we?

I have travelled to view the remains of universes where lurve met antilurve. It was an exceedingly sad sight.

It might be funny (if shortlived) to create a system like some workplaces where you get ‘attaboys’ which accumulate for good responses, but one ‘awsh*t’ wipes them all out. Sort of like the cows and graveyards game kids play on roadtrips.

Anti-lurve? I know some people would not be running around with 13000+ lurve that’s for sure. I feel the lurve gets way over used. Just sort of a buddy system. I am guilty of this. Hell, I’m gonna lurve on all of you right now and I’m not even wearing pants.
Anti-lurve would create too much backdraft around here.

In addition to the problem of popularity contests and intolerance of differing opinions, there is another problem that is made quite clear on Digg: people try to get dugg down. If they can’t get a large amounts of positive feedback, they see how far they can go in the other direction.

I just want to add that the quip “Removed by Moderators” is a bit like anti-lurve. When I see that, I think, “Wow, that person must have been WAY out of line to have their comment removed.” @scamp, exactly.

I’ve used SodaHead, where questions are polls, and each question and reply can be praised or condemned (and negatively-rated comments get semi-hidden), and find it is full of awful love/hate scoring and ideology wars, with people asking severely loaded questions to gather agreement, or perhaps to make it look like there is a swell of opinion for their smart-aleck observations. I find Sodahead to be very juvenile, and very thick with nasty right-wing American juveniles, and other depressing juveniles, and it frequently gets me down, though I don’t know how much would be blamed on the negative ratings. I would not recommend Fluther try it out.

Thanks Snoopy. I actually like that it’s left up there with the “Removed by Moderators” tag. That way we all know that that person said something that was deemed to be out of line. And it serves the function of the anti-lurve we’re discussing here.

Also, sometimes the next few posts respond to the out-of-line comment, and wouldn’t make sense if the post vanished.

@susanc: (I’ve just decided to think of that as “suzank” instead of “Susan Sea”) Thank you very much. Of course, I never thought of it as a prose poem, and if you asked me, I probably couldn’t give you a good definition of prose poem. Stil you made me go back and read it, and I guess I do kind of like it, myself. I mean, I actually enjoyed reading it and savoring the images. In case it’s not obvious, I started with the first or second concept, realized I was doing senses, and decided to finish with every sense covered. In any case, your words are way better than anti-lurve, and also, they are better than lurve!

@galileogirl: I don’t know if you are pro or con my avatar, but I wouldn’t mind a vote. I just brought it back because a few people asked me to. I can put it away if people are having a hard time with it. Although, if it is offensive, I’m trying to figure out why it should be. To my mind the worst that could be said about it is that it’s controversial art. Where is Robert Mapplethorpe when we need him? If you want to see Mapplethorpe’s work follow that link. If you find my avatar offensive, you won’t want to follow that link.

@daloon First I meant no challenge to your right to your avatar. I believe in the right to free expression above almost anything. I even ALMOST admire your daring. (I could not be so free in advertising my dimpled duo) As far as voting on the topic if it were a matter of your right, reluctantly lurve. If however it was multiple choice yours up against Brad Pitts’ and a couple of Calvin Klein underwhere models,...sorry. It’s like the difference between and earth.

@galileogirl: I hope you don’t think that’s my own personal ass. It’s just a picture I liberated from the internet. If it were my ass, then you’d most certainly be offering to pay me if only I would remove it. Anyway, to me, it looks like a feminine ass, and I can assure you that my ass is anything but feminine.

So you see, there’s nothing really daring from that point of view. And if you knew my history with names, which I explained on the question about my name, it would probably make more sense. It was carefully chosen due to factors unique to me.

They have this on gamespot and when there are console wars xbox fans bump up eachother’s comments and sony fans bump them down and vica versa so it becomes just a matter of who has the most fanboys online at a time. Also people take it personally sometimes and just give bad points to everyone else on the page.

You’d think it would put off people from making moronic comments but it doesn’t.
Make Lurve not War! :)

I’m one of the recent answerbag refugees, and I can tell you that we used to have a points system on that site where you could add or subtract up to 6 points depending on how high a level you were. The more points an answer had, the higher on the list of answers it would go, and those points would go towards the answerer’s score and allow them to level up. When you had points taken from you, it didn’t affect your overall level, but it did affect your “points positive” percent, and it lowered your answer in the rankings. The subtraction button (or DR- downrate, as we called it) was supposed to only be used on questions or answers that were “not helpful” according to the terms of service, but this was hardly enforced, and as the downrates and uprates were anonymous, people abused the downrate system and used it on people who they didn’t like, or just because they didn’t agree with an answer or question. This caused a ton of trouble. Personally, I love fluther’s system, and much prefer it to the one I’m used to from answerbag.

Answerbag used to work like that. A member could rate any answer up or down.

Furthermore, as you accumulated more points your ratings were worth more. They didn’t call it “lurve” but, for example, if you had only 100 “lurve” you could give or take 1 “lurve” from an answer. Or if you had 10000 “lurve” you could give or take 6 lurve from an answer.

And there were limits to prevent groups of friends from giving themselves lots of points and to prevent groups from ganging up on someone they didn’t like.

I think the system worked well, but this caused a lot of infighting and grumbling, so they did away with it.